


Ancient Texts and Modern Times

by CozyCryptidCorner



Category: Original Work, exophilia - Fandom
Genre: Demon, Exophilia, Gen, Human/Monster Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 02:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19938343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CozyCryptidCorner/pseuds/CozyCryptidCorner
Summary: Sometimes in academics, you end up accidentally summoning a demon or two. It just happens.***If you are reading this on any third party apps (such as unofficialao3), or on any platform besides AO3, Tumblr, and Wattpad, then you are reading stolen work. I do not give consent for my stories to be published or pulled elsewhere.***





	Ancient Texts and Modern Times

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, everyone! I’m proud to congratulate @trashybutnottootrashy on their first place win in the raffle! Here is their voucher commissioned prize.

#

Every building has its own distinct, scent, and even more so for libraries. It’s not a passing observation, but fact, and one that you are sure to observe whenever possible. This specific library is in the center of a buzzing metropolis, a five-story building of shelves upon shelves filled to the brim with books. Fact and fiction each have an entire floor of their own, things such as scientific magazines that can be easily swallowed by children, to a brand of storytelling that makes one question their very reality of life. As much as you wish you could just listlessly browse, fingertips running over the spines of carefully protected hardbacks, you sit at a table directly in front of a librarian’s desk, thoroughly filling out paperwork.

There is a unique scent of dust in the air, one that happens when many different regions of decay end up in the same area, but still not something that you are particularly abhorrent towards. At this point in your life, actually, you find it somewhat comforting. As the LEDs softly buzz along with the rest of the background noise, a single light near the back corner flickering ever so slightly, you sign your name along the last dotted line. After taking a moment to go through the work again, just to double-check its accuracy, you stand, walking back over to the underpaid librarian who has been watching you with hawk-like eyes.

“Here you go,” you say, sliding the small stack of papers and your ID onto his desk, forcing a degree of cheerfulness for the sake of politeness.

With a pinching frown, he looks your information over the brim of his thickly rimmed glasses, glancing back up to your face as though he can hardly believe that you are telling the truth. The librarian takes a moment or two to pitter and patter on his computer, manually typing the information in for, you are certain, the sake of dragging the interaction longer than it needs to be. The clock above the desk ticks, ticks, _ticks,_ away, utterly oblivious to your straining brain as the librarian finally looks up, mouth pursed in barely disguised disgust.

“Follow me,” he says, perhaps a little too primly to be natural.

There is a set of double doors to the side of the desk, though close enough so that the librarians can catch anyone that shouldn’t be back there. The hallway you enter is long, the walls a faded yellow of what once was white, the carpet nothing more than a thin layer of scratchy gray-blue threads that probably haven’t seen a good cleaning for the better part of six decades. Doorways that lead to offices and cubicle rows pass, most of them empty and bare, some of them populated with fellow academics with the intent for growing their knowledge in mind. And, just up ahead, you can see the librarian step inside one of the cubicles, _your cubicle,_ and gesture calmly to whatever is on the desk.

You can’t see it until you step through the opening, but you can almost taste the ancient dust from a few paces away. And there it is, in all its glory, an unbelievably old binding written in a lexicon only few can recognize, and even less decipher. The librarian hands you a pair of specially crafted gloves for handling its brittle pages, eyeing your fingernails as though you might intentionally grow claws to rip the artifact to pieces just to spite him, specifically. Even after you put them on, he still gives you a side-eye, as though you don’t have a list of qualifications to handle such things that runs for a mile long. After a pause that lasts longer than it should, the librarian leaves, giving you one last oddly angry look as he walks back through the long hallway.

With your full focus now on the object you have been trying to get your hands on for the better half of a few months, you look down on it with a kind of awe that you rarely feel for anything but the finest examples of the era you study. The cover is ladened with faded gold, a rune gently shaped in the center with finely sharp details that still is easily readable to someone who understands the language. Carefully, you run your finger over the shape of the word, mouthing the syllables silently, just like you used to when you were first learning. An old one, in a dialect that looks like a muddied mix of Sanskrit, Egyptian, and Hebrew.

There is a college student’s dream arsenal of pens, highlighters, and notebooks in your bag, all of which you carefully pull out and place on the opposite side of the table, near one of the two chairs, already mentally calculating which color you are going to attach to which particular subject/note. With reverence, you reach a gloved hand over, and slowly, gently, open the book, quickly looking over the first page within. There isn’t much more than a much more decorative reiteration of the cover, colored inks swirling into a geometric design that was very uncommon for the time frame the piece has been dated as.

Using your phone, you take a careful picture of the front page, holding it as flat as can be, then you begin to read. Well, maybe a correction, you can’t really understand the book the same way you can pick up something in your native tongue, words cohesively stringing together in your mind, this is a little more complicated to make sense of. The syntax is a bit wonky, definitely something a person from the past would be able to look over with ease, but for you, it takes some effort and muttering a couple of phrases out loud to understand.

You scribble something in your notebook, a word that you aren’t familiar with. It could be a name, you think, looking over the masculine suffix that’s common enough among any records that have been found. Again, you write the name, with better confidence and calligraphy, trying to sound out the syllables in your head before making a fool of yourself to the two other people who also occupy the space. The name itself is unfamiliar, and while there are often records of people with names as standard as _Jordan_ or _Isabella_ in today’s world, but this is something you haven’t seen before. You’ll have to speak with your professor about this one, just to double-check.

Hours fly by without you noticing, only when you raise your phone to take another picture and the low battery warning flashes do you realize how much time has passed, and how quickly. Your appointment time with the artifact is nearing its end, and you are certain that the pinched-faced librarian is about to storm through though double doors to unleash a kind of hell only a special breed of academics can create. Feeling a little low, you begin putting your stuff away, pens going back in the front pocket, notebook slipping back into the front compartment. As your stomach rumbles for food, you mentally pick out a place to pick up some dinner on the way back to your home while slinging your backpack back across your shoulders. Thai? Mexican? Mmmm, pizza?

Oh, there he is, right on cue, the clipboard in his hand carrying your sign-out sheet. Silently, you reach out, one of your pens already in hand. Without giving him a chance to critique your color of choice, you sign the line with the sickest neon pink in your collection, adding a good, curly loop to one of your name’s letters just for good measure. Before he can even open his mouth to say anything, you leave, the gloves on the table, speed-walking down the long hallway so you are out of hearing range once he can even formulate words. You walk right into the left door, the loud _thawk_ echoing through the building as you exit back into the central area of the archeologist selections.

Down you go, picking the stairwell instead of the elevator, moving quickly enough to feel the breeze of cold AC threefold against your neck. The lobby is always four degrees from freezing over, most people wrapping up in two or three layers just to survive a single study session. And perhaps they all have the right idea, wearing jackets, because the moment you step out into the bustling city, you notice just how hard it started raining while you were inside.

A car horn honks somewhere to your left, the sound of squealing tires echoing through and out of the alleyway, making you wince from the high pitch. Fog rises from the drains on either side of the street, the steam licking at your ankles as you run across the street, the pavement still hot from the sun’s permeating gaze. The bus stop is just ahead, you can see the headlights of something large and square, so you pick up your pace just to reach it in time, gasping and choking as you scan your pass in the little machine. The driver offers nothing more than a grunt as you shove your way past the overly crowded front. The bus creaks as it leaves the station, the engine popping as it moves the impossible weight it carries.

Your stop is only a few minutes away but saves you an hour’s walk in the pouring rain. The steps of the central bus doors are slippery from the many that have taken it before in the day, but you keep your balance as you hop back down on the sidewalk, you still-damp clothes soaking once more. The flickering neon of an old mom and pop deli manages to catch your attention through the hazy mist, so you make the snap decision to get your food there, folding your arms around your chest as you enter. A fan takes the unfortunate liberty to blow its air right all over any skin you have left bare, and your teeth immediately begin to chatter to battle what it thinks is oncoming hypothermia.

It takes you only a moment to pick your food, pay, and walk back out to the marginally warmer streets, and you half jog, half walk back to the apartment complex you call your home. The stairwell reeks of mildew, but thankfully not of much else, and with the rainy air flowing through the open windows, you can close your eyes and pretend that you are a fully-fledged archeologist, exploring a ruin of infinite potential. After jiggling your lock for what you would consider a moment too many, it gives, and you’re finally back, ready to look over your notes and organize them properly to place in your thesis.

Again, the name catches your eye. You smooth over the paper, a crinkle from closing wrong blemishing the very corner of the page, trying to figure out _why_ you are so enamored with that single group of letters. It’s different than the borderline obsession you possess for the language in its entirety, there’s something _about_ it that seems… different. You press your finger up against the first syllable, and say it out loud: “Yav… Ved.”

Nothing happens.

You point to the other half of the name, and say it as well: “Far-sen..nah.”

A soft _tap tap tapping_ sounds against wood as you tap your finger on the table, biting your lip. <em<This is for your thesis, you think over and over again, pinching the bridge of your nose and desperately trying to summon the words once more. “Yavid… Farzenah.”

You only have a single moment to sit back in your chair before your apartment explodes. Or rather, upon further observation, _implodes._ Everything, the floor, the table, the chair, seems to warp, as though the large, black orb that suddenly appears in the center of your studio room is sucking everything around it. The blobs of color suddenly shift, the edges of your vision growing blurry, then dark, and suddenly everything and nothing ceases to exist. Then, a sudden rise of color, and there is _someone standing in the middle of the apartment._ There aren’t a lot of PSA’s about what to do when someone suddenly appears in your living space, so you revert back to a primitive fix-all.

You _scream._

It’s a man, or at least holds the shape of masculinity, though you don’t even think that this creature is _human,_ and as he tries to hold his hands out in a placating gesture of peace, you are too hysterical to listen to any voice of reason. All it takes is one slithery movement forward to set you off further, and you make a dodge for the door, keeping close to the wall. The only issue with your plan is that whatever this is, he is suddenly standing right in front of it, and you barely manage to skid to a halt before ramming right into his scaly chest.

Kitchen. Your drawer has knives, you can pull one out to defend yourself! Two steps are all it takes for the cabinets to be within reach, and you are quick to yank one of the faux wooden drawers out, hastily snatching a knife away and holding it out in what you hope is a seriously threatening manner. Though in retrospect, you probably aren’t the most intimidating person in the world, and the shaking from the spiked anxiety and adrenaline isn’t doing you any aesthetic-based favors. After what seems like an eternity, whatever he is speaks.

“Do not be afraid.” While anyone else might find his voice soothing, the fact that it seems he was born with the ability to soothe others ends up winding you up even more.

“No, thanks!”

“I have no intention of harming you.” The statement, at least, sounds as though he genuinely means it. He doesn’t try taking another step towards you, so he must be a quick learner. A swift, reptilian… horned… learner. “If you would just give me whatever tools you used, I’ll be going.”

“I don’t- I don’t understand.” You wish you could just push through the wall, to shove your way through the plaster and wood and escape into another apartment.

“The summoning tools.” He cocks his head, strands of silver hair falling into his eyes as he listens, carefully, to the footsteps of your upstairs neighbors. “Ah,” the creature suddenly seems to understand. “The portal must have materialized slightly off to the true summoners. A thousand apologies, your grace, the interconnecting aethors aren’t quite as they once were. Perhaps I could receive a bit of your undeserving kindness?”

When you don’t say anything, he continues, “would you happen to know if anyone in the immediate area would dare summon I?”

Though your neck is stiffer than it has ever felt, you manage to shake it ever so slightly.

“I suspected as much…” his voice trails away, his gaze falling onto your table. A frown sets on his face as he creeps closer, hand reaching out to touch the college-ruled stripes of your notebook. And then he looks at you again, slitted eyes narrowing. _” You.”_

“Me?” You squeak.

“It was you who summoned me.” His voice is almost accusatory, but not all the way there yet.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Perhaps not intentionally.” He picks up your notebook, flipping through it as though it’s his, and runs his fingers over a specific page. “However, that appears to be the case.”

“I still… I don’t understand.” God, you wish the floor would just swallow you up.

The creature, the- snakelike beast, you don’t know what to identify him as, dares to come closer to the shining edge of your stainless steel weapon, and points to the copy of the cover you had painstakingly mimicked to the best of your ability with his perfectly crafted golden claw. “Tell me, what does this word mean?”

“To summon,” you say, immediately understanding what exactly he’s implying. “But- but it’s supposed to be a book of poetry, that word has two connotations, it’s supposed to _summon_ emotions-”

“I’m afraid that’s incorrect.” He twists your precious notebook around, mouth puckering in thought. “But, I suppose, I can’t exactly blame you for clearly not knowing better. Tell me, then, who is now in rule? Is Ammenon or any of his descendants on the throne, still?”

You don’t know which Ammenon he means, because that was a pretty popular name… about five thousand years ago. But, still, you give him the name of your country’s leaders, explaining, “no one really does the monarchy thing anymore. I mean, there’s the Queen of England and such, but,” a bead of sweat rolls down your temple, “she can’t do things like raise taxes, she actually has to pay those as well… and, um, so on.”

“Ha.” It’s not really a laugh of amusement, more of fascination and curiosity. “Interesting. Well, regardless, you called for me with a single purpose in mind, and I may not return until it has been fulfilled. I shall, how do you humans put it, give this one to you for free. No soul needed in return.”

“Is that- is that what you really use as payment?”

“Mostly.” He flips over your pages once more, far more slow and meticulous this time. “But as this current summoning is, unfortunately, clearly accidental, I’m willing to give you a pass. Perhaps, in return,” he arches his eyebrows, which are just as silver as his hair, “you could spread a good word for me, to any witch or warlock looking for demonic help.”

“Um.” You lower the weapon, only slightly. “If… the conversation of demonic help ever comes up with someone I know is a witch or warlock, I suppose I can do that, yes.”

“Alright, then.” The creature- _demonic, he had said,_ reads over one of your pages, “so tell me, what is it you desired, while speaking my name?”

You shrug, a little shyly. “I was just thinking about finishing my academic thesis.”

“An academic thesis.” He looks back down over the notes you’ve painstakingly taken, outlining a barely cohesive idea that you are desperately trying to narrow down into something easily understood. “About?”

“Language.”

“I see.” He cocks his head, forked tongue licking over his fangs. “Perhaps we should begin, then. Seems we have our work cut out for us, hm?”

You lower the knife all the way, your arm hanging limply against your hip as you look over your new… colleague? Aid? You don’t know what to refer to him, or even what he is. But you accept your lot here, and gently take the notebook back, smoothing over the edges that have started curling over from age and wear with your thumb. Biting down on your tongue, you try to figure how you plan on handling this, what can you put him in charge of that will help, instead of hinder, your progress?

“How long have you been around? Alongside humanity, that is?” You muse aloud, trying to think a little harder.

“I’m still trying to figure out how long it’s been since my last summoning.” The long, black tail he has instead of legs flicks to the left. “I have a feeling that you don’t know where to begin, either.”

“You’re right.” The water kettle you had left on the stove in the few minutes it took to pull him into another reality begins to scream. He looks in its direction, aghast, and you flip the heat off, pulling an extra mug from a cabinet while you make tea. “Let’s work on finding a historical event that you remember.”

It takes a little while. You ask ‘Yavid,’ that’s his name, you found out, if he remembers anyone significant named Jesus from Nazareth. Not even a flicker of recognition in his eyes. You try to go down the line of Caesar’s, then the Ptolemy’s. Cleopatra, apparently, is famous from wherever he’s from just by her cunning and genius alone, but he hasn’t met her in person. “But I had already been around for a long while before that,” he adds, looking over his perfectly manicured nails.

A few days go by, and Yavid has been giving you some fundamental insights on everyday life from, by your calculations, four, maybe five thousand years ago. It’s incredibly fascinating, you admit, and you find yourself deeply distracted by his tails of barber feuds that last for years, brilliant milkmaids who end up in exalted positions, and animals that once could speak. You scribble various notes in your book, feeling an award creeping up with every word he softly speaks. This is remarkable, this is beyond astounding… this is going to bring a whole new view to the field of archeology and historical studies.

He eats, you asked at some point, you don’t remember when, but he does. Meaty things mainly, he requested for alligator at some point, and you do your best to accommodate him with the budget you have. You try not to let it slip that you are straining, but he catches onto things pretty quickly and hands you one of his many golden bracelets to sell. Just from that, you’re pretty much set for the rest of the month, your shitty job notwithstanding.

“So,” you poke at the food on your plate, hoping that if you shift it around, it will look more appetizing, “you can’t go back until I complete my thesis?”

“That’s how it works, yes,” though Yavid’s already been over this with you, he repeats it once more for your sake.

“It’s just the thesis’ completion? How will you know that it’s complete? Is it just the first draft? Is it once it’s peer-reviewed? Once it’s submitted?”

“I imagine once the entire process of turning in your thesis is over,” he folds his hands over each other, “that is usually the criteria for the process, or at least the kind I contracted to take care of.”

“Hm.” He’s going to end up being with you for the rest of the school year. You aren’t exactly sure how you feel about the impromptu roommate, you were, after all, renting in this shoddy area for a lower price on apartments just because you didn’t want to deal with that. But there wasn’t much either of you could do about it, other than tough it out. “You can just… become contracted to take care of certain things?”

“Mercenary work would be a good way to put it, except others like me have to answer to a higher power, giving them…. A cut of our wares, if you will.”

“I think I understand.”

“Work has been incredibly dry, lately, though I suppose I know the answer as to why.” Yavid looks over to where your phone lies, tossed haphazardly onto your bed. “The leaps of advances in just the last millennia, the last century, even, have been quick and remarkable. Seems that no one requires a miracle.”

“I wouldn’t say that, specifically,” you run your finger down the lower half of your fork. “Knowledge of ancient things isn’t really respected anymore. Sure, people know that at some point, ancient civilizations worshipped and summoned beings they thought were real, but ask anyone out in the street, and they would agree that those things hold up the same as fairy tales. I’m sure there are some rebellious kids out there trying to summon Satan or whatever, but they’re playing with objects that don’t really do anything.”

Yavid hums in agreement, looking at the cheap wine you purchased for his sake swirl in a cheap glass. “I suppose, then, that you will have to help us rise back up to the… what did you call it… mainstream media.”

You will not be doing that, so you say nothing, and instead take a sip of your drink. “Maybe we should talk about how the syntax evolved.”

The weather turns cold, almost like some ancient god decided to snap its fingers. You wear a coat, arms braces tightly across your chest, whenever you leave the apartment. Whenever you return, Yavid is usually coiled out on the floor, his snaky half wrapped around whatever it could find, your table, your bed, the weird column in the middle of the room, and such. He is normally reading a book you checked out of the library for him, often something history-related, since he doesn’t really like the flashing of your tablet. Or, more realistically, he has yet to figure out how to work it and doesn’t wish to admit it.

“Of course the planet is round,” you’ve heard him mutter, “can’t believe it took you people _this_ long to figure it out… again.”

You’ve pulled up the moon landing on youtube for him to watch once or twice, his yellow eyes glittering in grayscale. That’s about the most you’ve managed to impress him, the nuclear weapon shenanigans that follow World War Two leaves him less than thrilled, “and,” he adds, poking at the glossy textbook paper, “two world wars? Was the second one _that_ necessary?”

“To be fair,” you add olive oil to the pan, the scent of stir fry perfuming your apartment, “Hitler and his posse _were_ persecuting eleven million Jews, Romanians, homosexuals, and literally anyone deviating from what they perceived as ‘perfect,’ including the sick and disabled. If that madman’s power grew unchecked, most of us wouldn’t be here now.”

Yavid grunts in response, brows furrowing as he turns the page.

One semester bleeds into the second, and the bitter cold begins to seep away from the earth, making way for the sun’s unbearable warmth. Your thesis is thick, papers stacked against each other neatly as can be, the final draft approved by two of your professors who volunteered to look over it. You read over it once more, as you have done many, many times, with Yavid over your shoulder.

“Well,” you say, placing it in a cheap paper folder, “this is it.”

“Perhaps it is.” Yavid gives you a crooked grin. “Unless you fail.”

“I will not!” You tuck the folder into your backpack, giving him a face. “I am an unbridled genius. The board is going to have one look at this and be vaporized on the spot.”

“They surely will, and if your unbridled genius doesn’t accomplish that, my immeasurable wrath will.”

You let out a little puff of air in laughter, slinging the backpack over your shoulders. “Look, if I return and you aren’t here-”

“Which might be unlikely, as it might be until the paper is approved before my task is complete.”

“I know, but,” you place a hand on his arm, “thank you.”

“Oh.” He blinks in surprise. “You’re welcome. And, I suppose, if you need anything else, just call for me.” 

“Maybe,” you hum, letting the door shut behind you. 


End file.
